Portuguese education had been in a state of gradual transition in the
early 1970s, its deficiencies generally recognized by government officials and educators; but the political and social pressures unleashed in 1974 by the revolution brought the educational system to a state of
chaos from which it had not emerged at the end of the 1975-76 academic year. Traditionally, low priority was given to education and, as
a percentage of gross national product (GNP -- see Glossary), Portugal's budgetary allocations for education were the lowest in Europe.
Schooling was not a critical concern in the lives of most Portuguese.
A large segment of the population had been excluded from full participation in the formal educational process and was suspicious of it or
even hostile. Portugal had the lowest rate of literacy in Europe.

Despite reforms undertaken since 1964, education was essentially
class oriented and aimed at meeting the requirements of an academically adjusted middle-class constituency. Teaching was formal and
innovation discouraged. A large proportion of the teaching personnel
did not possess officially required pedagogical training. There were
substantial discrepancies in standards of education between urban and
rural areas. Scientific and technical training was inadequate for the
needs of future economic development. Statistics available in 1976
relating to education were dated and inadequate and did not reflect
existing conditions.

Portugal has not been a pacesetter in the arts except in lyric poetry.
Patronage of the arts came almost entirely from the court and the
church until late in the eighteenth century. The arts in the nineteenth
century mirrored the taste of the bourgeoisie. Even in the third quarter of the twentieth century, Portugal lacked cultural solidarity. Despite the work of exceptionally gifted artists and the periodic flourishes
of creative activity -- which directly paralleled periods of prosperity in
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries -- Portuguese literature, architecture, music, and the plastic arts have been derivative of foreign
styles and techniques. Outside Portugal the sixteenth-century poet Luís de Camões is perhaps the only widely known Portuguese artistic
figure The Portuguese have been sensitive to what some observers
have felt was a national inferiority in formal culture, and they have
tended to be apologetic about their country's artistic expression. Art-

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